Ends tomorrow

The Lower Mainland’s newest online marketplace will open on Monday, April 28, when LikeItBuyItVancouver.com begins previewing a limited-time sale of everything from household goods to consumer electronics to cruises, travel, cars, gift cards and personal services.

I had just finished reading Denise Ryan’s enlightening weekend story about the occasionally testy public conversation over whether dog owners should have access to yet more park space for their pooches’ off-leash romping (Dog busters: Owners feel the heat, April 28).

Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann
, PNG

I had just finished reading Denise Ryan’s enlightening weekend story about the occasionally testy public conversation over whether dog owners should have access to yet more park space for their pooches’ off-leash romping (Dog busters: Owners feel the heat, April 28).

Then an insight came to me just after I had turned to the comic Marmaduke in one of my morning papers: At the core of this dispute is a perceptual disconnect — many of the behaviours dog owners think most endearing in their pets are the same ones that frighten non-dog owners sharing the same space.

Let me be clear. I like dogs. It’s not dogs which are the problem. The problem is dog owners, who often seem so befuddled with sentiment that they don’t grasp the impact that owner-tolerated behaviours can have on non-dog owners.

Marmaduke, which features a Great Dane and his hapless owners, relies heavily on amusing anecdotes provided by doting readers about their own dogs.

Almost all the dog behaviour in Marmaduke that’s meant to generate appreciative chuckles in its dog-owning audience is behaviour that non-dog owners might find alarming, offensive or outright dangerous.

Jumping up, running in uncontrolled packs, barking aggressively at postal workers or delivery personnel, lunging at food items – certainly not the kind of dog I’d want to encounter off-leash while taking a toddler for a stroll.

The other day, I walked in a public park. It has a large area for off-leash dog activities that’s well removed from trails or public picnic areas. Footpaths are heavily signed that dogs must be kept on-leash.

In my hour of walking, I passed 27 owners with dogs off-leash. Half a dozen times, dogs ran over and jumped up. Several times they barked. Each time the smiling owner assured me that his or her dog was friendly and didn’t bite.

Sorry. All dogs will bite. In Vancouver alone, which has more 140,000 dogs, there have been almost 1,000 attacks or aggressive incidents since 2008; research suggests this is the tip of an iceberg.

British Columbia statistics regarding dog attacks are scant. Incidents appear to be tabulated only at individual municipal animal control agencies.

However, one national study in 1996 found 1,237 Canadians had been bitten severely enough to require emergency medical attention. Of these, 706 were children under 10. Of these children, more than half were bitten on the face, head or neck. Of those who were admitted to hospital with severe injuries, 23 were toddlers.

Another study of 28 Canadians killed by dogs between 1990 and 2007 reported that 24 were children under 12. Nineteen of these children were attacked by multiple unrestrained dogs – that is, dogs off-leash and stimulating pack attack behaviour in each other.

In Vancouver, over the last four years, there have been almost 5,000 reports of dogs off-leash or running at large and more than 1,500 complaints of unrestrained dogs running in packs.

“All parks have had reports of adults, children, and cyclists being knocked over and injured by dogs jumping up or running by and knocking them off the trail. Most parks have also had reports of dog attacks on animals including other dogs, deer, squirrels, snakes, ground-nesting birds, fish in spawning areas and farm animals in neighbouring fields.”

This is unnerving since statistics clearly show small children are most vulnerable to dogs.

About 700 dog bite incidents appear to be reported on average each year in B.C. But animal science research at the University of British Columbia finds that only about 10 per cent of aggressive dog incidents are reported to authorities. This is because most bites are from dogs known to the victim – a family pet, a neighbour’s or a family friend’s – which inhibits reporting.

Yet this would indicate 7,200 people being bitten each year. That extrapolates to more than 70,000 people suffering dog bites in B.C. from “friendly” dogs since 2001 – clearly a significant public health issue.

The Insurance Bureau of Canada doesn’t track dog bite statistics either but it says the situation in Canada is trending like the U.S., where one-third of liability claims paid in 2009 were for domestic dog bites which sent almost a million victims – half of them children – for emergency medical attention.

The U.S.-based Insurance Information Institute says payouts for dog bite claims have risen 30 per cent over six years to more than $400 million. There’s a similar trend in the United Kingdom where the number of dog bite victims taken to hospital has doubled over the past decade, topping 6,000 in 2011.

Let’s by all means continue Metro’s conversation about dogs in parks, but please, let’s not cloud the issue with sentimental assumptions that pooh-pooh non-dog owner’s anxieties or the idea that further expanding off-leash areas might be at the expense of other park users’ enjoyment.

I had just finished reading Denise Ryan’s enlightening weekend story about the occasionally testy public conversation over whether dog owners should have access to yet more park space for their pooches’ off-leash romping (Dog busters: Owners feel the heat, April 28).

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